Akidah F.

About Akidah F.

I build integrated communications and fundraising systems the way institutions are built — deliberately, structurally, and with longevity in mind.I’m an executive communications and revenue strategist with 20+ years of experience architecting national-scale ecosystems that unify messaging, audience engagement, and Annual Fund performance across complex organizations.My work sits inside the Annual Fund but operates beyond it — designing systems across donor-advised funds (DAF), peer-to-peer, and broad-based donor audiences, while building campaign and lifecycle infrastructure that drives sustained revenue, retention, and growth.I specialize in aligning communications and development into a single operating system — where campaigns, media, lifecycle marketing, and donor pathways function as one coordinated engine. I’ve built and launched systems from zero to multi–six-figure performance within a year, and I design for what happens after launch — how systems hold, scale, and continue to perform under pressure.My background spans the full communications stack — from national media strategy and top-10 market placement to crisis communications, public health campaigns, and executive messaging systems.That includes:• National and local media placement across broadcast, radio, and digital platforms• Crisis communications and reporter management• Public-sector and public health campaign execution with state and county leadership• Paid, earned, and grassroots integration (geotargeting, out-of-home, on-the-ground activation)• Executive communications, organizational training, and message discipline at scaleI don’t approach communications as output. I approach it as infrastructure — something that must perform, translate across audiences, and hold under pressure.This page is a working space.I use it to think in public about how systems function — where they hold, where they fracture, and how values surface under pressure across leadership, culture, and lived experience. What I share is grounded in active leadership roles, live revenue systems, and operational realities that don’t make it into strategy decks.This is a space for thoughtful disagreement, grounded in execution and lived accountability.If you’ve ever translated strategy into reality, aligned stakeholders across competing priorities, or delivered outcomes inside constraint — your perspective belongs here.This space is for contribution, not performance.For shared language, not hierarchy.For people willing to think together with rigor, respect, and lived intelligence.

Experience

1. Senior Director, Donor Relations & Donor Communications

   Black Women\'s Health Imperative

   Mar 2024 — Present

   As a distinguished leader within the Development team at the Black Women\'s Health Imperative (BWHI), the nation\'s preeminent institution dedicated to Black women\'s health equity since 1983, my Development work supports our four-decade legacy of transformative advocacy and innovation. BWHI, as the first organization of its kind conceptualized and established by Black women, stands as the cornerstone of a national movement advancing health justice and wellness for Black women and girls across America. BWHI\'s mission to revolutionize the national healthcare landscape, fostering systemic change through evidence-based solutions that resonate from community health centers to congressional chambers remain critical to date. BWHI continues to improve upon its distinguished legagcy of placing Black women\'s health sovereignty at the forefront of America\'s public health agenda, and catalyzing institutional changes that ripple through healthcare systems nationwide.

Education

• Spelman College

  Bachelor's degree, Double Major: Business & Theatre

  1998 — 2002

• Harvard Extension School

  Certificate In Progress, Nonprofit Management

• The New School

  Master's degree, Communication and Media Studies

  2013 — 2015